Legal Writing and Analysis in a Nutshell (5th edition)
West Academic Publishing, 2017

Excerpt: “Today, lawyers must not only write more often, but also more quickly. This new Nutshell offers a method of writing efficiently, without losing clarity, precision, and effectiveness. Our step-by-step method is illustrated in the flow chart in Chapter One. This method is designed to clarify each step you take and to help you make deliberate choices. Each step will be explained in one or more chapters.”

Praise: “This book covers the fundamentals of legal writing so thoroughly and carefully that it could well substitute for many first-year legal writing texts. Its approach may strike experienced writers as too traditional or too basic. Still, for the novice it will provide a solid grounding in legal writing style, legal analysis, legal memos, letter writing, and persuasive writing. Many practicing lawyers would do well to heed the teachings in this book.

“One critique: Persuasion is so common in law schools’ first-year, legal writing courses that this Nutshell probably had to cover it. But it covers it cursorily and might well have left it out. Persuasive writing is a topic that can (and does) fill entire books.”
—Wayne Schiess, professor at the University of Texas School of Law